If the impact had happened just a few feet down the road, there could have been a different outcome for Cecilia Douglas and her two young daughters who died in a crash into a canal along Alligator Alley this week.

Debbie Tower, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Transportation, said the car hit a pole, not the cable system designed to keep cars from ending up in that canal. FDOT installed the $4-million cable barrier system in Collier County hoping to prevent similar types of crashes.

"There was not an opportunity for [the cables] to work in this situation," Tower told NBC-2.

If the car had veered off the road another 20 feet over, it would have struck the cable barrier system, she said.